The My House building at 2010 Peniston Street. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)

A facility that served the children and families of the Milan neighborhood for decades on Peniston Street until Hurricane Katrina is now finally nearing its reopening, 10 years after the storm, officials said. Continue reading »

The Broadmoor Improvement Association’s long-awaited renovation of the former St. Mathias School on General Taylor Street into a new Arts & Wellness Center will open to the public Monday, June 1., officials announced. Continue reading »

WWNO, the local public-radio affiliate, and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in Central City will host and moderate a discussion next week of the impact of the BP oil spill on Louisiana seafood that still remains five years later. Continue reading »

After years of waiting and months of construction, Martin Wine Cellar will reopen its new store at its original Baronne Street location on Friday morning, company officials announced. Continue reading »

As New Orleans continues to recover from the devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina nine years ago, the city should pass a law preventing any schools or daycare centers from being built on top of toxic soil — including the proposed rebuilding of the Booker T. Washington High School over the old Silver City dump site in Central City, retired Lt. Gen. Russell Honore and local allies said Saturday morning.

“We’re the oldest city in this part of the country, and we ought to be the first to make a stand,” Honore said. “We’re not going to put a school on a dump.”Continue reading »

It seems like just yesterday that we were packing up our TV cameras and computer hard drives to get out of Dodge before Katrina struck. Danae finally took Ray Nagin’s pleas seriously about 4 a.m. and began the long, slow journey to her parents in Arkansas with five dogs and our photographer. Allan, his sister Sandy Levy and their aged Mother, Miriam Katz, left several days earlier for Birmingham in an abundance of caution.Continue reading »

I want to tell you a story, though it’s a tired one. It’s one of watermarks, floodlines, and rust. It’s one of great sadness, overwhelming emotions, and glorious reunitings. One that over the last 10 years most Americans are tired of hearing, and one that many New Orleanians have a version of. It’s Katrina. And Rita. And levees breaking. And the curious nine years that followed the moisture-rotted rollercoaster of events in latter 2005 in the Crescent City. And while my tale unfurls I will ask you to remember two words: gumbo party.Continue reading »

Streetlight repairs have been completed in neighborhoods marked in green, are underway in pink areas, and still to come in orange zones, as of August. (source: nola.gov/DPW)

When New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked the residents of City Council District B how the city should spend their tax money Tuesday night, the answers nearly all involved streets: the holes in them, the lack of light on them, and the people who sleep on them.

Most of those problems — like all of those before the 300-year-old city — lack easy answers, and have been compounding for decades, Landrieu replied. But on at least one complaint, there is a glimmer of hope: the long-darkened streetlights along St. Charles Avenue are scheduled for repair in September. Continue reading »

The entrepreneurship boom in New Orleans is a real phenomenon, and a crucial factor in the city’s continued rebirth — but it must also be accompanied by more economic opportunities for the unsustainable number of jobless African-American men in the city, a panel of business leaders said Thursday evening.

“We can get there,” said Rod Miller, CEO of the New Orleans Business Alliance. “We are a ‘new’ New Orleans, but we’re not our best New Orleans.”Continue reading »

Has post-Katrina rebuilding really created a new city out of New Orleans, or is the “boom” more of an artificial economic bubble that is bound to burst? This question will drive the next installment of Tulane Hillel’s occasional series of “The Big Issue” discussions, set for Thursday evening with the title “New Orleans 2.0: Fact or Fiction?”Continue reading »

A drawing of the proposed community center included in city documents.

Kevin Brown (via tccno.org)

A long-delayed plan to create a new community center on Monroe Street in west Carrollton — now slated to be a new home for Hollygrove’s Trinity Christian Community — received a thumbs-up from the New Orleans City Planning Commission on Tuesday, and organizers say they now have the funding in line for the project to move forward. Continue reading »

The state lawmakers who sit on the legislature’s Hurricane Recovery Committee will take up the issue of “intimidating” Road Home collection letters previously raised by New Orleans City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell in a meeting this evening (Monday, Feb. 24), officials said. Continue reading »

New Orleans City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell and several state legislators will discuss the recent round of Road Home letters sent to homeowners at 5 p.m. today (Monday, Jan. 27) in the City Council chambers. Continue reading »

The site of the former Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne Street is still surrounded by chain-link fence, but the new roof on the old New Orleans Bicycle Club building can be seen behind it. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)

Although the site of the former Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne Street remains a quiet concrete foundation, neighbors have been cheered by the sounds of construction at the old New Orleans Bicycle Club building next door, and owner Cedric Martin says rebuilding his beloved grocery remains on track to begin in March and finish six months later. Continue reading »

Buildings along a 10-block stretch of Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard are now eligible for grants of up to $50,000 to help with the costs of historic renovations, as part of a $1 million “Main Street”-style program across New Orleans announced by Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Tuesday. Continue reading »

The one-day “After Katrina: Transnational Perspectives on the Futures of the Gulf South” conference Friday at the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University will feature keynote presentations by Richard Campanella and Kalamu ya Salaam, as well as a range of other local cultural figures, neighborhood leaders, activists and academics. Continue reading »

Prytania Theatre owner Rene Brunet laughs with his son, Robert Brunet (right), as he arrives at Sunday night’s Oscar-watching party in February 2012. (UptownMessenger.com file photo by Robert Morris)

Jean-Paul Villere

As a child of the 80s reared on cable and the small screen, my first opportunity to see The Wizard of Oz on the big screen came in a mid 90s summer-revival series at the State Palace, and the experience remains with me today. First of all, the movie alone to be seen in this fashion should not be missed, I don’t care how many times you’ve seen it. Secondly, to see a film in a somewhat decrepit but likely once masterful venue layers the sensory. Creaky, spent springs and paint-chipped seating, flooring with decades of goo, and echoey cavern of yesterday celluloid dank and dark. And then Mr. Brunet spoke.Continue reading »

The Saenger Theater has finally reopened. The opening gala took went off without a hitch over the weekend, with the facility receiving rave reviews. Public and private dollars funded the whopping $52 million renovation that has been in the making for eight years, so expectations were running high. Thankfully, the Saenger seems to have delivered.

Even cantankerous Times-Picayune theater critic (and sometimes theologian) Ted Mahne, whose scathing review of “Avenue-Q” is the stuff of legend, gushed that the Saenger was “magical.” Oh, and the sense of civic pride? It was “palpable.”Continue reading »

The former Frank’s Steakhouse site on Freret Street. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)

The possibility that an upscale student-housing development may be planned for the large block of Freret Street where the former Frank’s Steakhouse still remains a shuttered landmark is being met with concern and questions by people in the neighborhood. Continue reading »